Our last group meeting focues on "Movies of the Reader's Mind," allowing the writer to understand exactly what is going on when the reader is reading their piece. This exercise was extremely helpful for me as there are times where I can be unclear in my work and my group members are not sure where I am coming from. Forcing my peers to tell me what is going on in the story so far allowed me to compare their interpretations with my own intentions. By doing this, I was able to pinpoint any vague areas, giving me the opportunity to strengthen my writing. My group members were very helpful in providing suggestions on how I could clear any misunderstandings with my work.

I was also given some great advice on how I could continue my piece from where I left off. My group supported how I implemented an aspect of my relationship with my mom and connected it to a moment in my trip. They suggested continuing the idea, but expand it to different members of my family, making it more personal and easier for them to see myself in my piece. I am always able to find new ways to strengthen my voice, an area that I have been constantly working on throughout this class.

-Aaron

The Sixth Group Meeting

In our sixth group meeting we explored the technique of Criterion-Based Feedback. Since the past couple of group meetings have involved crafting a question, we have become fairly proficient in the art, and found this feedback method particularly easy. While it was definitely helpful to have the handout in front of me listing the many aspects of writing, I found that the majority of this list already exists in my mind. What was useful  about this exercise was that it allowed me to create a more narrow and focused question. Since I recently began an experimental piece of fiction, I decided to craft my question about the meaning of my piece. Although my piece is not finished, I still received valuable feedback from my group, as they suggested that I define my character more vividly in the beginning in order to enhance the readers perception of the story. We spent a large portion of the group meeting focusing on my own piece, since it was a first draft and I really needed input from my fellow classmates. I think that this particular group exercise would be very helpful to use at the beginning of the semester, since the responses it elicits are more narrow and allow for more thorough revisions. 

-Nicole

Fifth Group Meeting

(posted by Maida on the group's behalf)

For our fifth group meeting we headed to the Maclab so we could print out what we had worked on during the previous rotation. Unfortunately we had some printer problems, so we lost a little time getting things ready. Fortunately we still managed to get through all the assigned work. First we read the thing about voice and made sure we didn't have any questions about it for one another. Next we read each of our pieces out loud to one another. We picked out 5-star quotes from each of our papers (I didn't think mine had any but we managed). We came to the conclusion that all of the quotes had a few things in common:
They were well written and descriptive, they reflected recognizable traits of the authors (i.e. we could "hear" the author saying these things), and they were all quotes that group members could
identify with. Overall I thought it was a successfull and productive period, and reaffirmed at least my belief in the "sayback" method.
-Matt